[Don Jones]

I think it’s best to think of individual poets rather than schools. Schools are inevitably political above and beyond the usual politics of everyday life. More accurately, as Christian Wiman pointed out, I paraphrase, schools are the gathering of mediocre artists around an exceptional artist.

I prefer to focus on individuals, even of wildly divergent “schools” because, again, a movement is about power more than the art and that is why so much art cranked out by a movement’s denizens is largely mediocre. It’s a simple bell curve.

I agree with Ed about Robbins take on Dylan Thomas and his reference to the gorgeous Manley Hopkins’ poem could make me forgive almost anything.